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Bill to help rural optometrists seeing some progress

US Air Force Photo A bill that would benefit optometrists working in rural communities is being considered by the state legislature.

A bill designed to help rural optometrists who participate in national vision plans control costs won approval Thursday from the House Health, Insurance and Environment Committee.

Republican Rep. Jon Becker of Fort Morgan is one of the sponsors of House Bill 1012, one of several efforts he's mounted to help local health care providers deal with problems they face from national health care providers that dictate the price of services.

Becker told the House committee that currently, an optometrist is required to provide deep discounts on services that the vision plans don't cover, and that often means they lose money. His bill would prohibit that practice, leaving the optometrists free to charge the appropriate price for services provided.

Optometrists testified that such a practice results in cost-shifting, which means the loss on one customer is passed onto others, such as the uninsured or those covered by Medicaid or Medicare.

The national vision care industry, not surprisingly, opposed the bill. They claimed such a law would take away benefits from customers, such as for a second or third eyeglass frame, for example, when a child loses his or her glasses.

Dr. Zoey Loomis of Fort Collins told the committee that just a few national vision plans monopolize the market in rural communities. Individual doctors have no negotiating power to change terms, but the vision plans can change the terms without the consent of the doctor. "Basically, it's a 'take it or leave it' contract," she said.

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The national vision plans bring in a lot of patients, she explained, but the plans are one-sided and require her to discount services that the plans don't even cover.

She explained to this reporter that for example, a patient might come in for an eye exam, eyeglasses and contact lenses. The vision plan covers the exam and the eyeglasses, but not the contacts or the fitting for those contacts. And yet the vision plan gets to dictate what she can charge for those latter services, frequently well below what it costs her to provide them.

The Colorado Legislature at work. (Denver Post file photo)

"Patients are harmed due to inflated prices in order for the optometrist stay in business," she said. She has to hike prices higher than what they could be in order to account for those discounts required by the vision plans.

Nineteen states have also done what Becker's bill anticipates, and it passed out of the committee on a 10-3 vote. It now heads to the full House for debate.

The Colorado Senate this week gave final approval to the bill that they hope will finance broadband access in rural communities. Senate Bill 18-002 would take dollars from a fund that currently finances phone landlines and transfer it to a broadband deployment fund. Those dollars would then go to private telecom providers in rural areas to either provide broadband service for the first time or improve what's already there. The dollars targeted in the bill currently go to CenturyLink.

The bill, which is sponsored by Senate President Pro tem Jerry Sonnenberg of Sterling and Sen. Don Coram of Montrose, passed the Senate Thursday on a 30-5 vote.

Under the measure as introduced, the fund, known as the High Cost Support Mechanism (HCSM), 20 percent of the CenturyLink dollars would go to the broadband fund per year for five years, exhausting that portion of the fund. Sonnenberg and Coram had sought approval last week from the Senate Business, Labor and Technology Committee to ramp that up to 60 percent in the first year and 10 percent for the next four years. That was opposed by CenturyLink as well as four members of the seven-member committee.

But when SB 2 got to the Senate floor, it was a different story. Senate Minority Leader Lucia Guzman, a Denver Democrat who has long advocated for improvements to rural broadband, offered that same amendment and it was approved by the full Senate.

The bill now moves on to the House, where it will be sponsored by Democratic Speaker of the House Crisanta Duran of Denver and House Majority Leader KC Becker of Boulder.

Becker also won final approval of a bill this week to encourage more information to high school students and their parents about concurrent enrollment, the ability for a high school student to take college courses while in high school, and have those course credits apply both to high school graduation requirements as well as the beginnings of a college degree from a Colorado college or university.

Currently, school districts must notify students and parents about the opportunity to enroll in college courses while the student is still in high school. The measure would add information on the benefits of completing college courses. Becker's HB 1005 won a 49-15 vote from the House on Tuesday and heads to the Senate, where it is sponsored by Republican Sen. Kevin Priola of Henderson.

A Senate committee this week also gave a first round of approval to a bill that could help rural communities that experience sudden job losses or other significant economic events.

Senate Bill 18-005 is sponsored by Democratic Sen. Kerry Donovan of Vail and as introduced mirrored her three previous efforts to put $500,000 in economic development grants into a new program for rural communities.

Donovan explained that rural local governments don't often have the resources to deal with job losses, such as when a mine closes, as has happened several times in western Colorado in the past few years. The bill directs the state to take the lead role in finding resources and services for those local communities when a mine or a plant closes, for example.

When a company closes, Donovan told this reporter, those job losses have a domino effect. There isn't usually a similar job available in the same town or even a nearby one. So a significant job loss may result in a community losing a family, whose departure means less business for the grocery store, dentist or other small businesses.

Previous versions of the bill have died in the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee the last three years. This year, Donovan worked with Republican Sen. Ray Scott of Grand Junction on an amendment that stripped the bill's funding, although grants may still be available from existing resources within the Department of Local Affairs, which would coordinate services. That change helped get the bill out of the State Affairs committee on Tuesday, with Sonnenberg casting the deciding third "yes" vote on the five-member committee. The bill now heads to the full Senate.

Finally, a bill that would extend insurance benefits to families of state employees who are killed in the line of duty passed out of a Senate committee Thursday.

Currently, when a state employee - whether in the state patrol, department of transportation or department of corrections - dies in the line of duty, insurance benefits end at the end of the month in which that employee dies. That becomes a hardship for that employee's family.

Under Senate Bill 148, health insurance benefits would be extended for a year to that employee's family. Republican Sen. Beth Martinez-Humenik of Thornton, one of the bill's chief sponsors in the Senate, said in a Thursday press conference that when someone is grieving, "the last thing they're thinking about" is dealing with insurance.

The bill is supported by the Colorado State Patrol and Colorado Department of Transportation. CSP Chief Matthew Packard said the state needs to back up its employees.

Also speaking in favor of the bill: Velma Donahue, whose husband, Trooper Cody Donahue, was killed Nov. 25, 2016 in a road accident. The Donahue family lost its health insurance five days later.

A day later, her daughter got sick and had to go to the doctor, only to find out their insurance had been canceled. Senate Bill 148 would not help the Donahues, as it is not retroactive, Martinez-Humenik said Thursday.

The bill also would not apply to county public employees, such as the three deputy sheriffs in Adams, El Paso and Douglas counties who all died in the line of duty in the last six weeks. However, Martinez-Humenik and her co-sponsors, including Democratic Sen. Dominick Moreno of Commerce City, said they were interested in looking into that issue, too.

Senate Bill 148 won unanimous approval from the Senate Health and Human Services Committee and heads next to the full Senate.

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